quickly! It's a week later and I am still wearing my ty-dye t-shirts and
my little "feisty" necklace that someone in the Pecan Grove gave me!
Joe says I'm in denial- I say I'm just mourning!! This years festival was
great as always, and I'm already looking forward to next year. I like doing
these reports so that I can come back and read them later and remember
things that I may have forgotten otherwise- I hope some of you feel the
same way!! This years land rush got off to a soggy start. It was pouring
rain in Wichita when we left home with our little camper. We had waited for
a couple of hours for the rain to let up, but when it kept raining we
decided that we would just have to go and deal with the mud! When we
got to Winfield about 11:00am, the land rush line was already gone, and
the rain had stopped. Steve Peters and Bill Langsdorf had already staked
out claims, and the territory was different this year since the baseball
diamond was gone and grass grown over in it's place. The dulcimer tent
(Sharon) had arrived, and a couple of new neighbors were starting
to set up camp. The anxiety is always a little high when it comes to setting
up camp and trying to save enough room for everyone, but things always seems to work out fine and everything just falls into place. Moving our camper from it's resting spot at home evidently aroused a huge nest of big ants from down inside the windows somewhere, so that was a nice un-expected surprise to deal with too! Joe and I had to go back to Wichita that
night to pick up Jeff from school, so we returned Friday to stay for the
duration of the festival. Heavy rains in the north cause the Walnut river to
rise out of it's banks and caused a little excitement in the campgrounds.
A few of the campers along the rivers edge were advised to evacuate
until the danger of flooding passed. We were amazed at how high and
fast the water was moving, and at the amount of debris that was being swept downstream. The rest of the weekend was pretty cool and damp, but the sun did come out Sunday and stayed around for most of the week. The sunny days and cool nights were just perfect for jamming and gathering around the campfire.
Wednesday's band scramble was a great deal of fun and drew a large crowd.
The theme for this year was "Pie rats of the Pecan Grove" and we kept running into "pie-rats" for the rest of the festival! Some sort of filming crew
for a PBS station kept showing up around the campground at various locations
on Wednesday, and we happened to catch them recording a session at the
Carp Camp that evening for a wonderful large-energetic jam (that was full of
pie-rats too!) By Thursday the campground was full of most of the regular
froggers, and after a yummy supper of Taco soup, a group of us made the trek to Stage5 to catch "Split Lip Rayfield" doing a late night set (HOW many biscuits can you eat... in the morning????) Friday was another beautiful cool day, celebrated with a delightful Italian feast for supper. It was definitely a
hit with the camp and got a overwhelming vote to replace the sausage
& sauerkraut of previous festivals!! A friend of mine, Jill from Minnesota,
was performing on the new "Group Therapy" stage with a couple other female vocalists she had met this week, so I took my video camera over to the camp to record the great event! They performed some swing tunes and called themselves "Hot Tub of Winfield and The Suds Sisters." It was a lot of fun and they did a terrific job! Since I had the camera out and rolling I jokingly started filming a "Winfield documentary" and ended up carrying it with me while we went wandering over the next couple of nights. We caught a late (very-late) Wilders set on Stage5, a lot of street-jamming in the Pecan Grove, a little of Tommy E's Saturday night Stage5 appearance, and had a blast strolling around! Some of the new performers at the festival this year were; Classical Grass, Daybreak, John Cowan & Friends, Nick Charles and the Yonder Mtn String Band. I have to give you a short list of my favorite things from the festival this year:
favorite new tune (for me anyway!)- Wizard's walk
favorite new lyrics- Do, the stuff that buys the beer
Re, the guy that pours the beer
Mi, the one that drinks the beer
Fa, a long way to the john
So, I'll have another beer
La-ger in a frosty mug
Ti, no thanks I'll have a beer
And that brings us back to Do, do, do, do
favorite new friends- Hot Tub of Winfield and the Suds Sisters
favorite meal- the Italian feast of course!
favorite show I saw- "The Guitar Rules" with Crary, Bennett, Emmanuel,
Huttlinger & Flynn
favorite "phrase-of-the-festival"- "Thats what I'm talking about"
Well, that's about all I can remember for now, so I guess I'll wrap this up! If anyone is interested in our "documentary" just let me know and I'll make you a copy!
Until next year.......
Renee